Audience Questions

Audience QuestionsHour 1

AMD isn't really a competitor anymore. They're largely used in cheaper computers, and even the low-end has been supplanted with low power, low cost Intel processors. AnandTech.com has some great benchmarks on both, but he should get an Intel. They are faster and more reliable.

Marsha has a MacBook Pro, but when she uses the DVD player, the control panel disappears when she goes full screen. Leo says it disappears by design. It should reappear when she hovers the cursor over it. If she can't get it back, she can try restarting the computer and starting over. She should also check System Preferences>>Displays and make sure it's set to the maximum display resolution.

There's also a feature to zoom in and out on the display. She can hold down the Control key, and then use two fingers on the trackpad until it zooms back out. She can also turn off gestures for the track pad in System Preferences so she doesn't accidentally zoom in again.

Whenever someone gets an Android phone, it will ask them to log in using their Google account. Unless he specifically chooses not to have it sync, it will sync his contacts. Since Sundar had already copied his contacts over using a microSD card, he has duplicates. Leo would stop syncing using the microSD card, and only sync with Google. Leo lets Google handle all of his contacts and calendar information, and he doesn't keep it anywhere else. The advantage to this is, when he gets a new phone, he just has to sync it to Google and he'll have the same address book everywhere.

Now that he has the duplicates, he'll need to find a way to get rid of them. Leo suggests going to contacts.google.com and merging contacts. He can clean up his address book there, then export it so he has a backup. The he should use the Google address book from then on.

Leo thinks the Minecraft.jar is obfuscated or further encrypted, so he can't get into it. He wants to install modifiers for his Minecraft game. Chad of OMGCraft says that's not the way he'd want to go about it though. Chad says to use MCPatcher, which will patch the mods he wants into the Minecraft JAR files. This program will let him install his mods without having to do any coding by hand.

Leo says it's very difficult to move an app to another computer. Not only is it difficult just to move those programs, he's also moving them from 32bit to 64bit which in some cases is just not possible. Windows Vista has the capability to move programs built-in, but Leo doesn't recommend doing this at all. He really should buy new apps or install them from their original disks. Another option is to clone the drive from the old computer, and dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7 on the new computer.

Leo says it shouldn't be an issue to keep running it since Microsoft will continue to support it for awhile. Windows 8 will have many of the same features, too. This will be less important as time goes on, because in the future he'll be storing everything in the cloud.

Audience QuestionsHour 3

He could install Plex on it, but since it's such an old computer, it may not be powerful enough to play some higher quality video files. He also wants to connect it to his TV using the old VGA port on it. Leo says that VGA is an analog signal, and he can get a VGA to HDMI adapter for it. It won't be cheap though, because it will have to convert it to a digital signal. It would cost over $100, which would be about as much as that netbook is probably worth.

He should check MonoPrice.com and look for a VGA to component cable. Some TVs also have VGA ports, so he might be able to use the TV as he would an external monitor.

Songza is internet radio similar to Pandora, except with Songza users can find music based on moods instead of favorite artists. John heard about it on iPad Today hosted by Sarah Lane on TWiT. Songza also has an iOS and Android app and even is available on Sonos. Songza is free, although it's only available in the US for now.

Tamar is considering AT&T Uverse but the salesperson at Direct TV told her that on Uverse the Internet will slow down when she gets a phone call or watches TV. Leo says it may be true, but she'd have sufficient internet bandwidth to easily do both. However If she's watching an HD TV show and recording another HD show on DVR, then the internet speed will suffer because Uverse puts a higher priority on the TV signal.

She also is wondering if she would run into the bandwidth cap of 250GB a month if she's recording radio shows and downloading audio podcasts daily. Leo says audio is very small, and she would easily stay within her limits with that. If she's downloading video regularly, especially in HD, then she'll hit that cap.

Leo would look into a local cable company for internet and TV if that's an option in her area. Typically cable has a faster internet connection and they have better deals when bundled with TV. There's a website that can help called Broadband Reports. People can report in about their experience with internet service providers.

He can use both. It really depends on how much hard drive space he wants to dedicate to Windows. Bootcamp will take the hard drive and divide it into two partitions -- one will run Mac OS X, and the other will run Windows. When he starts up, he can choose whether it will be a Windows or Mac machine. When he boots into Windows, it is a full Windows computer and runs at full speed. All the memory and processing speed is devoted to Windows.

Virtualization software such as Parallels, VMware Fusion, and VirtualBox can actually use the Bootcamp installation of Windows and run it within Mac OS X, so he can have both running simultaneously.

Jacob first got a game on his XBox 360, and it worked in full 1080p on his HDTV. He then returned it and got the Playstation 3 version of it, but now it only will work at 720p. It says on the box that he has to have a TV that supports HDCP. Leo says HDCP is copy protection, and it's very annoying.

Leo thinks his TV does support HDCP, but he might not have a compliant cable. The reason he didn't have an issue using the Xbox, but does have this problem with the Playstation is that the PS3 has a Blu-Ray player built in. That means they didn't have to implement HDCP on the Xbox. He should check his settings in the PS3 to make sure it's set up properly.

This Week in Tech News

Samsung announced the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge today. The new phone includes an octacore Samsung Exynos processor (for the international version); 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED displays; 3GB of RAM; 32, 64, or 128GB of internal storage; 16-megapixel cameras with optical image stabilization; a new fingerprint sensor in the home button that no longer requires a swipe; an infrared heart-rate monitor that Samsung says also helps the camera obtain accurate white balance; integrated support for both Qi and PMA wireless charging; fast USB charging that’s 1.5 times faster than the Galaxy S5; a speaker that’s 1.5 times louder than the S5’s; and integrated support for Samsung Pay, which uses either NFC or MFT (LoopPay) technology for transactions. The S6 also has some notable changes including no interchangable battery, no waterproofing, and no microSD card slot. That means the storage capability is limited to 128GB models, and more or less forces users to buy more storage models in order to get more space.

Apple sent out invitations for an event in San Francisco on March 9 called "Spring Forward." We expect to get more details including pricing and availability of the Apple Watch. The event will be streamed live.

The FCC this week voted 3-2 to reclassify broadband providers as telecommunications companies. This gives the FCC the ability to regulate the internet. The FCC has tried to regulate internet service providers, but was thwarted by lawsuits. The courts agreed that the FCC had no right to regulate them unless they were telecommunications companies, not information companies. After considerable debate and 4 million comments to the FCC website, the FCC voted on Thursday to reclassify internet service providers as telecommunications companies.

Citizenfour is an Academy Award winning documentary on the story of Edward Snowden. He was a contractor for the NSA as a systems administrator working out of Hawaii, and that's how he was able to obtain information. What he did with that information is what became so controversial. He went to Hong Kong, and contacted journalists to give them this information he had collected, but didn't want anything released that would risk the lives of government operatives. Instead, he wanted journalists to tell the world, Americans in particular, what the NSA had been up to.

Edward Snowden's actions may be controversial, but what is not controversial is the material itself that had been leaked. It's Leo's opinion that he's done a very important thing -- he took something that was done in secret, without the permission of the American people, and brought that information to the forefront so we can have a national discussion about it.

Leonard Nimoy, known for playing "Spock" in Star Trek, passed away at the age of 83 on Friday morning. He died of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He announced he had the disease last year, attributing it to his years of smoking decades prior.